a small victory for me

i am so excited to see my hydrangea bushes in full bloom. while most people would take this for granted, i am beyond thrilled since this took me four years to achieve this. the first year i planted them, they already had flowers, but were small. the second year, i decided to be clever and fertilize them. i instead killed them. year three, i didn't realize you don't prune the dead looking branches in the winter, so the third year was spent just growing the plants back. year four, no fertilizer, no pruning. so, basically, i just neglected them entirely and they are huge and full of flowers. each day they change color. i love the gradation of colors in these pictures. i know you can manipulate the colors by changing the acidity of the soil, but i am not even going there. oddly enough, all the bushes, while all in nearby locations, are coming up in different colors. the beauty of these flowers are inspiring me to try some new things with metal and color, so be on the lookout for some future posts on some of the projects that have been based on these plants. hopefully the experiments in metal will not take as long to achieve success as they did with these bushes. i don't have the patience!